Radio frequency (“RF”) and wireless communication technologies have become an integral part of our modern lives. RFID applications having short and/or long range communication capabilities have been applied in various business operations, such as supply chain automation, inventory tracking, smartcard applications, and security accessing. In one example, telemetry applications are used to gather data for temperature, motion, sound, video, light and moisture. RFID technology typically employs backscattered RF power or energy to identify distance objects.
An RFID system typically includes readers and tags, also known as transponders. RFID is a wireless technology that uses electronic tags for storing data. RFID tags are read when they are close to a transmitted radio signal from an RFID reader. RFID readers manage RFID tags and pass their information also known as tag data onto network servers, corporate databases and business applications. The readers act like gateways between tags and corporate servers/databases by providing RF interfaces to tags on one side, and standard network interfaces on the other side.
Mobile RFID readers typically operate on batteries. Certain types of tags, called active tags, also require batteries to operate. A problem associated with battery operated RFID devices is limited battery life. As such, the performance and uninterrupted operation of an RFID device are closely related to its power efficiency, because it stops working when its battery is drained. Accordingly, there is a need in the art to improve power efficiency for RFID devices to enhance the overall performance of the RFID system.